October 16, 2015

Seven or So Quick Takes

The fascinating thing about the '16 election is that there are these two huge tides pulling in opposite directions and it's uncertain which will prevail.

One tide is demographics, which of course greatly favor Democrat nominee (presumably Clinton). I said back in 2000 that GW Bush would be the last Republican president in a generation due to demographics. (And of course Gore won the popular vote as it was!)

Another tide is overwhelming thirst for authenticity, which, of course, Shrillary has none of. She's the poster child for inauthenticity.

Day-dreamed of Irishfest, and how quantitatively different the first weekend of August is from, say, the first weekend of September. Just a month, but a season apart. In early August you're wrapped in the secure womb of Summer, in September you're in the capricious slant-light of Autumn.

For someone who doesn't much like change, the change of seasons seems not ideal. But I recall now what a motivational speaker said recently, that he thinks people who don't like change are fundamentally selfish because they think the world revolves around them and the world should suit their needs rather than vice-versa. A lot of truth in that - certainly in a business setting my wariness of change is centered around me wanting to do something familiar and thus not as challenging.

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Ronald Knox hits it out with this, written in the late 1950s:

If [politicians] seek to bludgeon us into their own special point of view, that is only what big business has been trying to do these decades past, assailing eye and ear with slogans not meant to persuade, but to “get in under the skin.”

I can read this two ways: that that is how Obama came to power, on the strength of the silly “hope and change” slogan and thus Republicans in this election must likewise do, or, alternatively I can resist the times we live in and try to be part of the solution instead of the problem by wanting Republicans to offer substance and plans, not eye and ear candy.

I'm torn. I tend to think winning in '16 is more important given how if Hillary wins liberals will take over and dominate the Supreme Court for generations.

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Ultimately you can't have a mismatch of a large number of super-safe House seats with competitive seats without ending up fracturing the party. Seems like Big Data and government's overzealous monitoring end up allowing lawmakers to carve these ridiculously safe seats that produce artificially dramatic imbalances between members.

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One of the more impressive liberal delusions is thinking that a government that can't keep illegal drugs off the streets over the past half-century can keep guns off the streets.

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Sad but true carnal stories: can you imagine the pitch the producers made for Naked and Afraid: “We'll have a Survivor-like show but the twist is they'll be nude and so you get the prurient interest.” You'd think they'd get laughed at for the shamelessness of it or that enough people would be outraged, but it is what it is. Blurred or not, I'm impressed by those who can watch it sans arousal.

It's odd to read in a secular history book a link made, I thought, in primarily Catholic morality circles. I speak of the link between gluttony and lust, and how a book said it was former French president who was said to have a wolfish appetite that inadvertently displayed his sexual avidity.

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"Always, it is the things which affect us outwardly and impress themselves on our senses that are the shams, the imaginaries; reality belongs to the things of the spirit." - Ronald Knox, Pastoral Sermons

Why this URL?

Why "poncer.blogspot.com"?

PONC is the business acronym for "Price Of Non-Conformance", which basically means putting a price-tag on a screw-up. This from a faddish business book from long ago. We were impressed someone could make money writing lines like "quality is free".

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Betty Duffy

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